A Workshop & Making Connections

I've been quite quiet on social media this week.  Although it's been busy with a few commercial shoots, there has been something on my mind and I've been quite contemplative.  There are new questions, but there's a clarity emerging from the fuzziness.

Last Monday, me and Suzi went to 'A Greater Story' workshop in London with Jonas Peterson.  If you don't know his work, make yourself a cup of something and take a look.  He has an amazing gift.  He's a storyteller.  His ability to show connections between people in his photographs just blows my mind.

On Monday morning, we made our way from the hotel to the workshop location.  Rush hour in Hoxton. Everyone clasping a coffee, trendy attire, white earphone leads, determined faces.  I can sometimes feel disengaged from a scene like this, but we were walking with purpose too, being carried along with the Monday morning buzz to our workshop location.  We climbed the stairs to a light airy apartment, wooden floors and exposed red brickwork, our home for the day. Jonas started to talk. He's a humble man, and he speaks in a gentle tone. He's incredibly engaging. As he told his story there were moments I held my breath, laughed out loud, and wiped tears from my eyes. He opened his heart, and words resonated. Jonas also introduced us to Brené Brown, and I'm really looking forward to reading more and listening to her work and talks.

'Once you start to connect with people, good things start to happen'.

Bang.

This is it.  This is what it's all about.  This is what we try to achieve on our shoots.  We like to connect with you beforehand, so we can tell your story with honesty and truth.  For our family shoots, we like to hang out with you in your family home, and then go out on one of your favourite walks you share as a family.  We want to show you the real you, your connections, and how beautiful you are.

I wrote a post the other week about developing a style, and accepting my voice.  I can feel I'm on the right path, there were reassurances from the workshop. 

So, what next?  I want to take photos that always mean something to me.  When I'm on a shoot, I want to slow down and listen to my heart more.  We're just about to be carried away into wedding season, and we also have our own in a matter of weeks (more of this soon!).  We're working with some lovely families and telling their stories in the coming months, and we're excited about making short films as an extension to our portrait shoots. And there will be more personal projects, I'll be making time for this.

We want to share our journey with you, with honesty.  To tell our story with our whole hearts.  Thanks for being a part of it so far.

A Trip to the Dales on the iPhone

It was at the beginning of this year I made a resolution to get fitter, and it has been happening - some weeks a bit slower than others.  I've been trying to get out a few mornings a week for an hour's walk with a bit of running thrown in.  I decided to set myself a challenge, to climb the Yorkshire 3 peaks in summer.  You can read all about it here on a blog post.  Last week, we decided to give Pen-y-ghent a go with our friends Amy & Claire.  We didn't want to weigh our rucksacks down too much, so decided not to take the cameras, leaving room for the essentials - Dairy Milk Whole Nut and a Snickers.  Instead, we captured the trip on our phones.  On Thursday, we went for a potter around Malham, I don't think I've been there since I was a teenager.  It's SO beautiful.  First to Janet's Foss, and then a walk into Gordale Scar, which absolutely took my breath away.

Photos were taken with iPhone 5, using VSCOcam.

We were up early for a hearty breakfast.  We stayed at the amazing Lister Arms in Malham. They lit a fire for us to have our breakfast by.

We did our last checks, pulled on the waterproofs, filled the water bottles and set off for Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Our first view of Pen-y-ghent, and all looked calm and welcoming!

I was a little out of breath on the very first steep climb, but after that initial warm up, I got more into my stride.  There were still a few patches of snow around...

Chocolate break number one....

The last push up to the top is a bit of a scramble, especially in the big wind that had picked up, but we just took it slowly.

The wind came out, so the hoods went up!

And then back into Horton for a well earned drink.  Inside the pub, there was a board with recorded times people had run the 3 peaks in.  I think the best was 2hrs and 20 something minutes!  We were happy with our 3hrs something for Pen-y-ghent though.  Just need to leave enough energy for the other 2 in July.

A Trip to Dungeness

Dungeness has been one of those places on my wish list to visit for a long time.  I first heard about it as the filmmaker Derek Jarman lived there.  He designed a spectacular garden in what some people would consider inhospitable land.  Dungeness is a shingle desert on the Kent coastline, and has often been described as an apocalyptic landscape, or looking like the end of the world.  I can be really affected by landscape (I remember the first time I went to Suffolk and felt unnerved by that big view and sky), so I was slightly worried how it would make me feel.  But it didn't make me feel uneasy, I was just excited to be there.  The little houses dotted amongst the shingle, the skeletons of old boats piercing the horizon, the power station looming in the distance.  We had packed our cameras, my Olympus OM1 film camera, and the Super 8 cine film camera too.  Derek Jarman shot quite a few of his films on Super 8, so it was a bit of a homage to him.  So we set off to explore.  Dungeness is alive with noise. Footsteps on the shingle, the gulls, and the constant hum of the power station.  The photos are a mixture of mine and Suzi's images and some from the film camera also.

We saw a figure on the horizon beach-combing.  He headed towards us and we had quite a big chat about the area. His name was Chris Shaw.  He told us with glee that he, C. Shaw, liked to keep the shingle clean, and he beach-combs regularly to pick up all the plastic and debris that has been washed up.  He told us that in the summer when holidaymakers are enjoying the sandy beach at nearby Camber, his finds increase, as plastic shoes, buckets and spades get washed around the spit and arrive at Dungeness.  He then collects them and adds them to his 'plastic tree' sculpture in his garden.  

He also told us about this building - it used to be the old lifeboat changing rooms.

Women in large billowing skirts would launch the lifeboat and were paid in tokens (worth around 4.5 pence per week), and they used these to buy all their food.  Banksy also chose Dungeness as the location for one of his pieces.  It lasted for the grand total of 3 days on a rusty old shipping container, until somebody decided that it might look better somewhere else!  Now there's just a big hole where it once was.

And then we wandered over to Prospect Cottage (Derek Jarman's house).  Its bright yellow window frames are complemented by the gorse growing out of the shingle.  His garden started almost as an accident when he used a piece of driftwood from the beach to stake a rose.  He continued to collect items from the beach and experimented with plants that would grow within this landscape.  Somebody was in the house when we went for a look, so we didn't really want to go trampling, and admired from the road.

The pieces of driftwood resemble standing stones.

The light is spectacular down there, and it can change really quickly.

Just as we were going back to the car, we noticed a sign saying 'Open Studios'.  We were greeted by a smiley face outside a little shed.  Paddy's an artist down there.  He noticed our cameras, and he told us a story about how he had been travelling on the back of a motorbike, and had dropped his camera at 50mph but the camera still worked.  He'd forgotten how to shoot manually though, so we had a quick one to one and got him up and running again!

The sun had gone down, and the houses and boats were now silhouettes set against the lights of the power station in the distance.  I'm just so pleased to have visited, and there are plans for a return later this year.  I will share the Super 8 film once it has been developed!